"
"That's fine, doctor. But do you know why you have it?"
"I daresay that question is difficult to answer. I often seek for my
reasons, Addison, and I find many, though I can hardly say which is
the best, or whether any quite explains the faith that is always in me.
_Apropos_ of this evening, by the bye, I long ago found one of my reasons
in the theatre, the theatre which some really good men hate and condemn."
"What was that?"
"Oh, a very simple one. I believe that men in the mass express eternal
truths more readily, more certainly, than men as individuals. Put a lot
of bad men, or--we won't call them bad, why should we?--loose, careless,
thoughtless men, together in the pit of a theatre. Many of them, perhaps,
drink, and are rendered cruel by drink. Many of them care nothing for
morality, and have wounded, in the worst way, the souls of women. Many
of them show incessant hardness in most of the relations of life. What,
then, is it, that makes all these individuals respond so directly, so
certainly, to every touch of goodness, and gentleness, and unselfishness,
and purity, and faith, that is put before them upon the stage? I think it
must be that eternal truth--the rocks of good that lie forever beneath
the wild seas of evil.
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